Some fundamental influences on the pathology requesting behaviour of Victorian general practitioners--preliminary...

The results are presented of a preliminary study of Australian medical practitioners who graduated in Victoria in the years 1983 to 1988, which was conducted to ascertain if there were fundamental influences that affected how these practitioners requested pathology services. Multivariate linear regression was used to analyze the data. The study suggests that the year of graduation, the hospital of first post-graduate attachment and the gender of the practitioner were significant influences on the requesting of pathology (p = 0.0001 for each of the 3 influences). The university of graduation was not found to be a significant influence in its own right, but became significant in some two-way and three-way interactions. Some possible explanations for the effect of these influences are discussed, and further study is now being undertaken by the author.